Apple is Self-Serving and How to Combat That

I don’t mean this title in a mean way by any means but it seems that companies seem continually to be coming up against Apple and then releasing sub-standard products with little useful differentiation.

Apple’s position as a remote island was self-induced. They suffered from a terrible case of NIH (Not Invented Here) and though they used ‘standards’, they were seldom the widely adapted defacto standards of the PC industry. We got Nubus and ADB and were spared the horrors of ISA and both serial and PS/2 peripherals. With the iMac, most of this changed. USB was the interface of choice for peripherals and suddenly a Mac became an excellent citizen of the network (most had ethernet ports for years).

The compatibility problem was still there. Though most quality printers had high quality drivers, there was still a dearth of drivers for the odd little devices that were in your FLES (Favourite Local Electronic Store) and by the time MP3 players were breaking into the mainstream, Apple was seriously left behind. Manufacturers simply ignored making drivers or compatibility software for Macs. (My own experience in owning a Thomson Lyra was woeful – it needed a PC, it used some funky file format that only played on the Lyra and it needed to be loaded by CompactFlash). But Apple coming out with their own MP3 player was a surprise at the time – in hindsight it was entirely due to terrible support for Mac users with those peripherals. That was 2001. As we now know, the iPod went on to assassinate the MP3 player market.

Essentially the market failed to service Mac users so Apple had to serve themselves.

Fast forward to 2007. Support for the Mac with new smartphones and PDAs was disastrous. Manufacturers were simply not bothering. Nokia just ignored the Mac. Sony Ericsson the same. The software was buggy, Apple was having to build syncing of data themselves and users were having to hack text files to add compatibility strings to add new devices. The situation was unsustainable. And then Apple came out with the iPhone. Now, three years later, every phone manufacturer is scrambling to compete with it – and I think this is for the same reason as the iPod. Mac users have, on average, higher disposable income and they’re prepared to use it. They actually buy stuff. This is the secret of the AppStore. People have had smartphones for years but the amount of money from selling apps was woeful and for many relegated to a side hobby. In contrast, the iPhone is selling billions of apps and I believe it was because there was a niche in the market that needed filled. For Mac users.

This trend is repeated. Development of iChat AV because video-conferencing options for Macs were woeful. Development of Pages and Numbers and Keynote because most office productivity apps were crap. Development of Safari because browsers were crap (and political). The theme seems to be: if you don’t want Apple to stomp on your market, make excellent products and don’t exclude Mac users.